Working Models for Working Longer – 3

If it seems lofty for some who have never thought to answer the question, “what is my life’s work?”; then maybe it’s more like – “what’s the point of me working?” You don’t have to be any age to ask either way. But responses in later life are still uniquely individual in nature – geared by personal motivation, financial conditions and what shape you are in health-wise. Accordingly those responses will change through several transitions in the aging continuum.

Life plans. Formulas. Models. Portfolios. I don’t hear a vast majority of people going through their later life transitions articulating this issue of working more or less or longer in quite these ways. The conversations I hear (on the street as it were), tend to be a real mixed bag of views typically with those under age 70. But most of it doesn’t seem planned, formula-like or portfolio. That would seem like too much work.

And what shock to the system when media hype has an “aging workforce” marching forward as legions of centurions to a wondrous life as a centenarian – and “a working we will go?” The current super-expressed concerns over the macroeconomic effects of an aging population and groaning concerns over the individual’s ability to finance their longevity, have us pretty much agreed that working longer will be some fact of life.

Proposal. Rather than hype or scare, or lament for a lost promise of an entitled retirement perhaps earlier portfolio planning and ongoing playful rethinking is the new ethos.